Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/181



T needs no straining of memory to recall the rainy twilight autumn evening when I stood with my father in a crowded Moscow street and felt overtaken by a strange illness. I suffered no pain, but my legs gave way, my head hung helplessly on one side, and words stuck in my throat. I felt that I should soon fall on the pаvement and swoon away.

Had I been taken to hospital at the moment, the doctor would have written above my bed the word: “Fames” — a complaint not usually dealt with in medical text-books.

Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a threadbare summer overcoat and a check cap from which projected a piece of white cotton-wool. On his feet were big, clumsy goloshes. The vain man, fearing that people might see that the big goloshes covered neither boots nor stockings, had cased his legs in old gaiters.

This poor, unintelligent man, whom I loved all the more, the more tattered and dirty became his once smart summer overcoat, had come to the capital five Rh